Articles Posted in General Insurance Dispute Information

State Farm is looking to raise the rates of homeowners insurance in the state of Texas, appealing to the Department of Insurance for an increase up to 8.5%. The Lufkin Daily News reports

Insurance giant State Farm Lloyds filed with the Texas Department of Insurance on July 15 to increase its homeowners’ insurance rates in Texas by an average of 8.5 percent starting on Oct. 1 for existing customers upon renewal and Sept. 1 for new customers. Angelina County’s increase is below the state average at 5.7 percent. State Farm noted that 350,000 of its 1.2 million customers will see no change or a decrease in their rates as a result of the filing.

“We’ve seen major insurance carriers Allstate and Farmers raise their rates and now State Farm is completing the rate hike trifecta,” said N. Alex Winslow, executive director of Texas Watch, a consumer rights group based in Austin.

A recent New York Times article helps highlight just how far behind insurance companies are to innovations of modernity and innovation. Highlighting the cases of several cancer patients who were forced to go out-of-pocket to receive convenient oral treatments rather than in-house intravenous, etc., care, the NYT highlights how insurance companies rely on redtape and a lack of federal demand to innovate to demonstrate how the average citizen who, until they fall into crisis, believe they are fully covered suddenly are required to provide their own money for reasonable remedy:

Pills and capsules are the new wave in cancer treatment, expected to account for 25 percent of all cancer medicines in a few years, up from less than 10 percent now.

The oral drugs can free patients from frequent trips to a clinic to be hooked to an intravenous line for hours. Fewer visits might save the health system money as well as time. And the pills are a step toward making cancer a manageable chronic condition, like diabetes.

In a committee meeting relating to the insurance industry, witnesses recently laid before the Senate statistics and numbers that would imply an insurance agency, UnitedHealth Group, went to so far as to defraud through underpayment one in three of their clients:

CQ Healthbeat (3/27) reports, “UnitedHealth Group officials are in for an unpleasant experience at a Senate hearing next week – if a set-up session on Thursday was any indication.” At a Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee hearing today, witnesses “described how health insurers routinely defrauded millions of patients who sought out-of-network care by paying less than the insurers owed for medical bills.” A witness told the panel, which will hear from United representatives next Tuesday, that “the practice could have potentially affected as many as one in three insured Americans and lasted for at least a decade.” Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller, IV (D-WV), “declined to say what types of changes should be included in health overhaul legislation,” saying, “I want to make sure exactly what it is we need to do…just in the saying of it, I could do damage to health reform.”

This system of underpayment should come as no surprise to residents of the Gulf Coast, who found that their property insurers consistently undercut them by offering the bare minimum to their claims. The insurance agency at large is notorious for trying to bolster their bottom line by offering far less than the fair market or genuine value is to the damaged, insured homes or property of their clientele. It is becoming ever more important to attain legal support in the event you believe your insurance agency is acting in bad faith with their offer to your claim, whether it be health insurance or property damage or any type of issue with an insurer.